I was in Durban last year for the slaughter. At the end of the game a fist fight broke out in the stand across the pitch from us. A Bok-shirted guy was slugging it out with an All Black supporter. It was ugly and nasty and nobody around us said what we all knew.

The All Blacks supporter was a South African of coloured tradition, or whatever the correct term is today.

Why do so many South Africans still support the All Blacks? It is their democratic right but, as has been pointed out, a white supporter carrying an old flag would get short shrift.

New Zealand were happy to select teams with a racial exclusion right up to 1970. We know the Maoris were told to lose against the 1956 Boks.

Few colonial countries are blameless if you look into dark corners of the past. Is it something we just ignore or do we have the guts to raise the issue? Would this change things for the better or make it worse? Would this raise the question of quotas again and we know how that can kick off?

How do black players in the Boks feel when they run out at Newlands and so many locals are against them?

What about the coach? Isn’t this why Madiba wore the green shirt and why “One Team, One Nation” was created? To unify? We know, like so many issues in South Africa, it is a complex one.

Justifiable anger and offence for so long was never going to be easy to erase but, almost 30 years on, surely, it is time to grasp the nettle. Or do we ignore the issue and let it fester?

I long for the day when the Springboks play a real “home” game in Cape Town.